Shakespeare saved and Prospers

James Macdonald's elegantly arty RSC production of Shakespeare's late play may not be to all tastes, but it does skil-fully anatomise the drama's artistic, spiritual and political allegories.

Artistically, like the hero Prospero, Macdonald deploys state-of-the-art showmanship to command the imagination of his captive audience. Video footage of the sea, the sky and green cornfields, projected onto Jeremy Herbert's undulating white set, create delicately mesmerising effects to enchant the senses. Prospero's intention is to hypnotise and re-condition the usurpers of his crown, but Macdonald's production is scarcely less narcotic or didactic.

Spiritually, too, Macdonald simulates an earthly paradise about which a chorus of capella singers drift like lost souls. Although their improvisational style may not be everybody's idea of aural heaven, you can accept the testimony of the hypnotised characters - bewitched by what to them are hallowed sounds. Moreover, sparingly delivered but carefully orchestrated set pieces by choreographer Peter Darling reproduce the work of Prospero the god fantasist - as when his daughter Miranda and prospective son-in-law Ferdinand are propelled into a dance routine by magic shoes.

Macdonald's production is most interesting as a political allegory - a success it registers through the careful delineation of character. Philip Voss's Prospero is a complex, camp, tantrum-prone magician who suffers from megalomaniacal mood swings while adopting a patrician Santa-like persona. Oliver Dimsdale's gullible Ferdinand and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Prospero's naive daughter Miranda are more willingly duped by his rhetoric. But Amuka-Bird also betrays the kind of insecurity you would expect of a young woman reared by a self-mythologising patriarch who monitors her every move.

The political complexities of the play are further reflected in an articulate if subdued court of Naples. But while the courtiers go through the motions of sedition for Prospero's moralistic purposes, Zubin Varla's Caliban is a more impressively troubling figure. Tortured and bullied by Prospero, Varla presents a creature covered in weals who has been robbed not only of his home, but also his self-respect and even

his mental health. Varla's desperation leads him to idolise James Saxon's Pavarotti-sized drunk of a Stephano, who is given to ad-libbing tuneless arias. He even competes for Saxon's affection with Julian Kerridge's squealing, eructing jester, Trinculo.

Occasionally, the pace flags, but this is still an intelligent and visually chic account of the play's allegorical variety.